Taxation Isn't Necessarily Theft

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Let's pray. Lord Jesus, again, as we open up Your Word, we ask that You would send

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Your Spirit, open our hearts and our minds. Help us to rightly understand what You have revealed, so that we may believe what

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You have revealed here. And also, help us to have our confession be the same as what Your Word says, and that our lives will be a testimony in good works and repentance.

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We ask in Jesus' name, Amen. Any questions before we get into the Sunday school lesson? We're going to begin a look at the seventh commandment today, about not stealing and what it implies.

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But any questions percolate up because of the sermon? How do we answer the folks that say, in Jesus' name,

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I claim that this is good? Yeah, we touched on it in the sermon, the decreeing and declaring and commanding and controlling prayers.

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Here's the issue. The heart of that type of prayer is based upon a false doctrine known as the sonship doctrine.

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Here's how the logic works. The logic works like this. Jesus Christ is none other than God in human flesh.

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He is King of Kings and He is Lord of Lords. You, because you are a Christian, have been adopted into the royal family.

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Therefore, you are a prince or a princess. I don't look good in a tiara. I just want to make that clear.

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And you, therefore, need to exercise your royal authority. Now you're going to note nowhere in scripture are we taught to do this.

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Over and again, when we are taught to pray, it is not in this manner. When we see examples of prayer of Jesus and the apostles, it sounds nothing like this.

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So about the only time you see a command given is in the name of Jesus regarding the demonic and exorcism.

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In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to come out of here. The apostle Paul says to the slave girl in Philippi who had the spirit of Puthona.

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But when it comes to prayer, prayer, the Greek word itself prosuke, it literally means to, you know, to humbly petition a deity.

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And so you look at the examples that are given of Jesus's prayers. And here's the other thing. When the disciples came to Jesus and asked him,

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Lord, teach us to pray. What did Jesus say? He said, when you pray, say our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

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Thy kingdom come. You notice these are all petitions. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.

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Forgive us our trespasses. And so here's the interesting thing. The people who are the purveyors of this decreeing and declaring thing over and again, when you listen to them, when they teach on prayer, they will say that it is not a prayer of faith for you to say to God, not my will be done, but thy will be done.

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Well, that's weird. Jesus prayed that way. And Jesus taught us to pray that way.

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And so what they end up doing is they end up saying, well, that was before Jesus died. So technically, the Lord's prayer is an

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Old Testament prayer, not a New Testament prayer. Well, that's slippery, isn't it? If what they were teaching was the truth, why can't you point me to a single example of either

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Jesus or one of his apostles praying in the way that they are telling us to pray? It seems to be self -defeating for them, because when it doesn't come into fruition, it makes them look bad.

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Right. So why would they want to do that? You see, now that's the other thing. And I will be blunt.

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I have seen and I minister to part of the people who we serve in our

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Aletheia service. These are people who come out of these types of churches. And when you tell people as a

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Christian, you must decree and declare a thing. And so you are told this is what God wants you to do.

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So it inevitably happens. Somebody gets an illness and that illness has a big name attached to it.

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Maybe it's cancer or it has the word T in front of it. It's a terminal whatever. And so they are told that they need to take authority over it.

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So there they are in the name of Jesus. I bind you cancer off of me, get off of my body.

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You have no authority over me. I am a princess. This is how they talk. And they get worse and worse and worse.

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And when they are on their deathbed, what are they thinking and feeling? They feeling betrayed.

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Well, here's the other thing. They will ask the question of their pastor. Pastor, I did what you said.

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I took command and authority over this illness by his stripes were healed.

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And now I am one step away, one breath away from dying. Why didn't it work?

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Answer. You didn't have enough faith. It's terrible. And here's the thing.

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Nowhere are we taught to pray in this way. And nowhere are we told that God is bound to heal you when you decree and declare a thing.

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I don't know if you've noticed this. Have you been paying attention since Jesus died, rose again and ascended into heaven?

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There have been several, at least a couple of generations of Christians. What has happened to the preceding generations to ours?

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They died. They're all out there. And if Christ continues to tarry, we're all going to be out there, too.

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And you can sit there and you can command and control, declare all you want. It's not going to stop because Christ has not promised you eternal life now.

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He has not promised you perfect health in this life now. And it always fascinates me that the big faith healers that are out there telling everybody that they need to command and control and decree and declare, they all wear glasses.

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Never trust a faith healer who wears glasses because diminishing eyesight is all part of this old age thing.

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Exactly. Right. And here's the thing. If you remember in the early part of Acts, in the very early part, there's

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Peter and John heading to the temple to pray. And they said that there was a paralytic that they laid at the beautiful gate.

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And the text explicitly says that he was there day after day after day, which begs the question, how many times did

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Jesus walk by that fellow and he wasn't healed? When disciples, you know, did heal people, what did they say in the name of Jesus?

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Okay. So for instance, for instance, the apostle Peter, that exact same paralytic fellow, he was looking to Peter and John for alms.

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And Peter says to him, silver and gold, I do not have. But what I do have, I give you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth walk.

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Now that was a healing, an apostolic healing that was in a prayer.

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And he had that authority from Jesus to do that. Now you're going to note very early on, there were a lot of miracles associated with the preaching of the gospel.

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And by the time the apostle Paul is writing his last epistles, like for instance, first and second

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Timothy, the pastoral epistles, these are at the tail end of Paul's life. He's literally like days away from having his head taken off by Nero.

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And he is writing to Timothy. And we learn in this letter that Timothy, a pastor of one of the congregations in the city of Ephesus, he had stomach ailments.

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And the apostle Paul says to him, drink a little bit of wine to help ease your stomach.

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And that by, you know, when James writes his epistle, we read that when somebody is ill, you call the pastor, the elders and to anoint them with oil and to pray.

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And the most important thing in that prayer is that your sins are forgiven. Read it in context in James.

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And so the idea then is, is that what Peter did, he did. That's an apostolic healing.

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And we don't have that authority as Christians. OK, because I was just going to say, yeah, what about these?

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He or yes, that say that they are apostolic healers.

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No, they're lying. OK, there's no apostles on Earth today. And in order to be an apostle, in order to be apostle, you have to be an eyewitness of the resurrection and have been there when

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Jesus was teaching. The only abnormally born apostle is the apostle Paul. So over and again, this is the other piece of this.

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Over and again, you're going to hear with this healing doctrine that you need to command and control that part of your exercising of your faith, that you have enough faith that God can do this, is you need to sow a seed offering, i .e.

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send money to that faith healer to demonstrate to God your faith for these promises.

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That's your sure sign you're dealing with a huckster, a charlatan, somebody who's trying, who's basically teaching for shameful gain, things that they ought not to teach.

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Christians humbly pray. Christians do not decree and declare and command

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God. That is not our place. And I assure you that when God heals, he doesn't do so because you put money in the offering plate here at Kongsvinger or any place else.

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God heals purely out of his mercy, grace and love. It's a free gift, just like salvation.

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Oh, which is totally bogus. OK, how many human beings voted for God to create the heavens and the earth?

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OK, you see, right before Genesis 1 .1, there was Genesis 0 .1. Human beings said,

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OK, God, we give you permission. And then and then God acted. This is ridiculous.

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Scripture says that Christ died for our sins. God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were yet sinners,

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Christ died for our sins. I would argue that Christ in the incarnation, born of the

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Virgin Mary, suffering under Pontius Pilate, being crucified on the cross because of his great love for you and forgiving you of your sins before you were even conceived.

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That is a definitive act on God's part where he didn't ask you any of your permissions to do so.

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So this whole idea that God can't act unless you ask is ridiculous. Sometimes God doesn't act because he wants you to pray.

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Scripture specifically says you have not because you ask not, which is an indictment against these people because it's like, why aren't you praying for these things?

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Paul says, pray without ceasing. You know, you say, what does that look like? It means a lot of talking to God. This is what it looks like.

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Some people, they kind of go on this autopilot. Well, he's God. I'm busy. I got other things to do, so I don't need to talk to him. He knows what

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I need. He'll just give it to me. No, we're to pray for our daily bread. This is how he's set it up.

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And then the other thing is you'll note in Scripture, there are clear examples when somebody prays, when

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God says, I'm going to do this, somebody prays, God says, all right, I'm not going to do that.

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Hezekiah's prayer is an example of that. Hezekiah got word from the prophet. He was going to die.

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God said, get your stuff in order. You're going to be dead like in the next week or two. And it's like, get that will ready and get everything signed.

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And he literally got on his bed and just gushed his heart out to God in prayer.

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And while the prophet was leaving the court, he hadn't even gotten out of the palace yet, God said, go back.

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I changed my mind and Hezekiah got 15 more years of life. Don't tell me

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God doesn't hear our prayers. He does. Okay. That's kind of what I was going to ask because God knows what our needs are.

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Yep. He knows every single need. So when we pray for ourselves, for someone else, we don't need to get really detailed because, because God knows our or do we need to ask so specific.

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Okay. So look at our example from our gospel text today. They come to Jesus and they tell

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Jesus about Simon's mother, that she's there and she has a fever. Jesus responds and heals her.

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I would say it like this. It is not your responsibility to understand how a diagnosis works or to understand all the medical jargon.

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You, your prayer can be as simple as God such and such has it in a bad way.

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And they're in the hospital and I don't understand any of that. You do, you got to do something. That's a good prayer. So many people think that you have to become so detailed.

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You have to ask specifically, but if God knows each and every one of our needs, our desires, our hopes, our fears, we don't need to get that.

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You don't have to get very specific. You can just invoke and God, believe me, God knows all the details. I think it's kind of,

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I think God sometimes thinks that's really cute that they're trying to get all the details right and they don't even know what they're talking about.

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But as he knows all of these things, then some people will have asked me, no, why pray if God already knows that God will take care of it?

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Yeah. So answer. Cause he said to right. Right.

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Why did you have to eat your vegetables when you were a kid? Cause mama said so. Right. And believe me,

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I've heard that argument many times. Yeah. And it's like, and here's the thing.

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I don't know why God set it up this way. I don't know why have no clue, but this is the way he's established it.

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And so he says, pray. So we pray. And it, again, a lot of this has to do, this is why the, the sermon,

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I really kind of zeroed in on the first commandment, not having another God, because your prayer life and how you pray or who or what you're trusting.

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And it's going to say a lot about, you know, how you are dealing with the sin of idolatry.

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And believe me, you struggle with it just as much as I do. And we are tempted to put our trust for the things that we need in everything else other than God.

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And it's amazing our proclivity to do this, which is actually quite horrifying if you think about it.

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But that being the case, humble prayer to God and daily communication with him regarding our needs and the needs of our neighbor is what

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Christ has instructed us to do. You'll note that the Lord's prayer is a daily prayer. It is not a weekly prayer.

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Now on a good Sunday, I'll remember to pray it. Sometimes it'll fly out of my mind like last week.

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The idea here is, is that this is, this is our prayer that we pray daily. How do I know it's daily?

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Because you didn't pray for a week's worth of groceries in it. You only prayed for today's bread, which means you got to pull that thing out again tomorrow because you're,

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God's only piecemeal in this a day at a time. Does that make sense? Seventh commandment.

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Seventh commandment is what we're going to be looking at today. And the seventh commandment is a lot like the fifth commandment.

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Fifth commandment is you shall not murder. Fifth commandment is you shall not murder.

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And remember when we looked at the fifth commandment, the overriding question was the question that Cain asked, am

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I my brother's keeper? The answer to the question is yes, you are.

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You are your brother's keeper. So fifth commandment has to do with care for our neighbor regarding his physical body.

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Seventh commandment has to do with the needs necessary for our neighbor and ourselves to maintain our physical bodies.

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That's the idea. And so the seventh commandment reads, you shall not steal.

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And I like Martin Luther's summary of this commandment when he asks, what does this mean?

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He says, this means that we should fear and love God so that we do not take our neighbor's money or possessions or get them in any dishonest way.

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But listen to this. Help him help your neighbor to improve and protect his possessions and income.

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Wow. Now he's sitting there going, that's a tall order. You want me to help and protect me to protect my neighbor and his possession, his incomes.

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Wow. So in other words, don't take it, but help him keep it. Yeah, exactly. Now I want you to think about this for a second.

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We're going to steer into the political for just a minute. There is a way in which we are all keeping this commandment to a degree, and that is by paying our taxes.

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Let me explain. Our society is set up in such a way that we work from the idea that we have a distribution of tasks.

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I'm a pastor. Roger's a farmer. Don does mysterious things with agricultural things around the world, right?

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But I know that it's an important thing. So we've distributed among our society different tasks that we all specialize in.

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Some of you are teachers. Some of you would do other things. You get the idea. So that being the case, I am not trained as a police officer.

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I'm not. So me strapping on a gun and going and buying one of those little nickel stars isn't going to help in protecting our neighbor.

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However, paying my taxes so that Grand Forks County or Polk County can pay law enforcement officials who are tasked with the job of patrolling our streets, arresting the riffraff, punishing those who are doing evil, right?

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So paying our taxes is one of the ways in which we are keeping this commandment. And I have to talk about this because I run into this from time to time in the church.

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This requires us to have a conversation with that fellow. Have you ever met this fellow?

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I've met him in other churches. Thankfully, I haven't met him at Kongsvinger. And this is the fellow who has this.

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Well, he says he has this great love for God, that he has a very tight relationship with Jesus, that his devotional time is very serious and all this type of stuff.

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And he believes that he is doing a good work by sniffing it to the U .S. government and not paying his taxes.

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And he's trying to convince you that that is a good work as well. Have you met this fellow? You are blessed.

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Believe me when I tell you in evangelicalism, there's like a little clutch of these guys and they're in a little like in every church and they think it is their patriotic and Christian duty to not pay their taxes.

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So let me just say this because and I have to say it because I know that there are people who listen to our

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Sunday schools who are not here. If this is you, you've got to repent. If this is you, you've got to repent.

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There is nothing holy about not paying your taxes. You are literally breaking an explicit command of God given in Romans 13 to the

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New Testament believers that they are to pay their taxes. Now, if that means filing your tax returns and figuring out how much you owe and figuring out some kind of a payment plan, get on it.

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But if you think that somehow you're doing a good work by not paying your taxes, I would say you're breaking the fourth commandment, which says to honor your father and mother, and you are breaking the seventh commandment because you are stealing from all of us the resources that we need to make it so that not only are our possessions not stolen so that we can protect each other from having their possessions stolen straight up.

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And this is, by the way, this is not socialism. This is actually what the government set up to do. Now we talk about health care and other things like that in another conversation, but the idea then is this pay your taxes.

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So here it is. It's now February. You should have all received from your employer and all the people who pay you.

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You should have received those little tax slips. And some of you know that you're going to get a tax return. So you're right on it.

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You're going to go file your taxes. Some of you, though, some of you, though, you're going to file your taxes and there's going to be a check that you write at the end.

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So if you write a check at the end of it, say to the Lord, thank you, Lord, for this opportunity to keep the seventh commandment.

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And I ask that you would use this tax money to protect the people of our community.

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Now you smile because it sounds silly, but that's what scripture teaches.

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Paying your taxes is an opportunity to collectively protect ourselves and our neighbors.

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And that goes all the way up to the military, to the state troopers that patrol the highways, to our local law enforcement.

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You know, their job is to protect us from ISIS and whatever weird, crazy thing's going to come up next.

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And if it weren't for them, where would we all be? Remember, God has sanctioned the government for the purpose of punishing the evildoer.

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And armies are, when they're used rightly, protect you by destroying and killing other people so that you're not being killed.

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Such is the nature of the world we live in. All of that being said then, the idea, the central thought in this commandment is that God has created us, listen again, to look after each other, to look after the earthly gifts that He has given to our neighbors, not just ourselves, for their life and for their well -being.

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I spent a lot of time sleeping this week, much against my will, but when I was having moments of lucidity where I was somewhat awake and partially asleep, one of the things

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I like to do is just look at Facebook and see what people are posting. Have any of you do this? It's crazy what people post on Facebook.

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But somebody posted a funny video. They thought it was really funny. It was by a fellow by the name of Tom Mabe, and you could probably find this video somewhere.

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And what he had done is he had taken his brand new iPhone 7 or 8 and he took the electronics out of it and wired it up so that it worked off of remote control that when he pressed the button, it would shock the person who was holding it.

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Not just work with me here, work with me here. So then what he did is he had a friend of with a hidden camera filming this, and he went to a public place.

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He would go to a place where there was a park and there was a park bench, and he sat down and he put his phone next to him and then pretended like he had passed out.

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Maybe he had had too much to drink the night before, so he's sawing logs. And no joke, while he's sleeping on a public park bench, they have video footage of person after person after person sneaking up and trying to take his phone.

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And they would get no more than, you know, 15, 20 yards away when he'd pull out his remote, hit the button, they'd go like this.

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And everyone would laugh and think that's the funniest thing ever. I was thinking that is such an indictment of humanity.

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That is a flagrant breaking of God's command. And everybody knows that stealing is a sin.

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Everybody knows this. It's against the law in every single country on planet

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Earth. Even the hardened atheist would say, if you say, well, what's right and what's wrong?

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They would say, well, whatever is wrong is the thing that does that hurts somebody else. Taking somebody else's stuff hurts them.

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And yet you and I both, we all know it. You go out in public and if you're not careful with your stuff, your purse is out a little too far, it's going to get snatched.

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How much crime happens at the mall? A lot, yeah. When I worked at Walmart years and years and years and years ago, we had a guy who was our secret shopper.

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This guy's favorite thing was to do was lift weights and tackle shoplifters. There were several instances where it's no joke.

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It's like, you know, I'd be walking into work and I'd look and there he was, he'd have some guy in some, you know, chokehold on the ground saying, you're not going anywhere, cops are on the way, you know?

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And then the story came out. Did you hear about this in California? In California, Walmart is being sued.

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They're being sued in California because certain products that are predominantly used by African -American women for hair care are being stolen at an alarming rate.

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So Walmart's solution, lock up those products and require these women to actually ask for them so that they can't steal them.

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They're being sued and accused of racism for locking up those products. And it's Gloria Allred who's representing them, of course.

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Yeah, of course. But such is the state of the world that we live in. I had a friend of mine when I was in high school.

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He would tell me straight up, it's not a sin to steal using the five -finger discount unless you get caught.

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That was his argument, no joke. To which I told him at the time, you're going to hell. So this is not how

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Christians behave. So we understand then that God in this commandment has not only told us that we are not to not take people's stuff, we're not to take their stuff, but we're to protect them and help them to keep their possessions.

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I would have you consider the story of Zacchaeus in Luke chapter 19. Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he.

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And he climbed up a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus. And this is a great story because this is a story of Christ calling somebody, forgiving them, and then they immediately bearing fruit in keeping with repentance.

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Immediately. And so we see this in this fellow's life. And here's what the text says. Jesus entered

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Jericho, Luke 19. He was passing through and behold there was a man named Zacchaeus.

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He was a chief tax collector. He wasn't just the tax collector, he was the chief. He was a head guy in town.

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He's the one who owned the franchise. And the tax collectors in Jesus's day in Judea were swindlers.

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Absolute swindlers. And keep this in mind. Things were so bad in first century

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Judea that there was no middle class. The middle class did not exist. You were either wealthy or you were poor.

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There was no middle ground. And so Zacchaeus had ingratiated himself as the chief tax collector and made himself rich on the backs of people who were languishing in very difficult poverty.

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Keep that in mind. He was a chief tax collector. He was rich. He was seeking to see who

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Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not because he was small in stature, hence the song.

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So he ran on ahead, climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him for he was about to pass that way.

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And when Jesus came to the place he looked up and said to him, Zacchaeus, hurry come down for I must stay at your house today.

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Now this might not seem like a big deal, but in the ancient world you could see this as like a nuclear bomb going off.

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To have a meal with somebody in an honor culture such as this is to basically honor that person.

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Jesus is literally giving Zacchaeus a place of honor and saying I'm going to eat at your house today.

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I want to eat with you, which is unheard of. You don't eat with somebody who is a nefarious charlatan criminal who's living like a parasite off of everybody else.

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The fact that Jesus would eat with him just sent everybody into a complete tailspin, and we see it.

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So he says Zacchaeus hurried down and he received Jesus joyfully, and when they saw it they all grumbled.

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He's gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner, which is a silly statement because I don't think anybody in Jericho at the time and even to this present day could have invited

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Jesus to their home who wasn't a sinner. So this tells you a little bit about their understanding of sin, which is off to say the least, but Zacchaeus now noticed this.

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When Jesus calls him he honors him, and this is a man who now demonstrates that Christ has miraculously worked repentance in him, and you can see it in his actions.

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So Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, behold Lord the half of my goods I give to the poor.

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So he's literally going to go to his bank account, take that thing 50 percent, whatever that is, that's all now going to be redistributed to the poor.

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That's huge. That is ginormous, and he says if I have defrauded anyone of anything

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I will restore it fourfold. And Jesus said to him today's salvation has come to this house since he also is a son of Abraham.

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The son of man came to seek and to save the lost.

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So you can see in the story of faith, forgiveness, and repentance that the first breaths of Zacchaeus' faith, and this is kind of an important thing, have you noticed in scripture, especially in the gospels, in the gospels some people are nameless, some people have names.

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Have you ever noticed that? The ancient church actually gave us an explanation as to why that phenomenon is.

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For instance, who is the name of the fellow who when Jesus was carrying his cross and he stumbled and fell, who picked it up and carried it for him?

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Say it. Simon. Yes, his name is Simon. Simon the what? It's the Cyrene.

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Simon the Cyrene. How do you know his name? I mean, because this is the guy who was just randomly picked out of the crowd.

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There's Jesus on his way to the cross, on his way to being crucified, Jesus stumbles, the

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Roman soldier says, you pick it up, and he has to carry it. How is that we know this guy's name? Yeah, but there's there's a whole lot of people.

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There's a woman who has her her son is raised from the dead. We don't know her name. We don't know his name.

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How do we know these people's names? How? Because they were friends

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How, how would Luke know Zacchaeus? Because he was his tax collector.

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Survey says, okay, that's a good, that's a good try. How would they, how would

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Luke know his name? Okay, here's what the early church said.

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The reason we know the name of Simon of Cyrene, the reason why we know the names of certain people in the gospels is because they kept going to church.

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Uh -huh. So Luke knows Zacchaeus's name and who

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Zacchaeus is because Zacchaeus from this moment forward is a believer in Christ, and he continues going to church after Christ's death and resurrection and ascension.

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That's the reason why we know his name. So you'll see then that the

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Holy Spirit working repentance in him, that he recognizes that it is wrong for him to hoard all this money.

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Half of what he owns now goes to the poor, and he will give back and then some to anybody he's defrauded.

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That is the keeping of this commandment because up till that point,

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Zacchaeus was an arch breaker of the seventh commandment, and now is a believer in Christ.

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He is a forgiven sinner, and he bears fruit in keeping with repentance by keeping this commandment in the way it's supposed to be.

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And Jesus points out the fact that he is, that salvation has come to this house. Zacchaeus is saved, saved, and he's a son of Abraham.

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There it is. Now let me give you the opposite example, which is the terrible one, but also tells us something about Jesus worth noting here.

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In the Gospel of John chapter 12, Gospel of John chapter 12, we're going to read something about Judas Iscariot, but it's also, it tells us something about Christ in the meantime.

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Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany where Lazarus was, whom

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Jesus had raised from the dead. So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table.

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Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard. A little bit of a note here, nard is not native to Judea.

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Nard is something that is a resin found in India, which means that she had to pick this up from traders who were traveling spice routes from the

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Orient into Judea, which means it was very expensive. She anointed the feet of Jesus, wiped his feet with her hair.

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The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, he who was about to betray him said, why was this ointment not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor?

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He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.

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So we learned something about the character of Judas. Judas, the one who betrayed

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Christ, was a habitual breaker of the seventh commandment. And you'll note his pious pretense.

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He sounds so holy. Why wasn't this nard sold so that we can give it to the poor?

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I mean me. So you notice the pious pretense. But what does this tell you about Jesus? Consider the implications.

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Did Jesus have a money bag? Yes, Judas was in charge of it. Jesus had a money bag.

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Judas was given the task of being in charge of it. And what was the money in it being used for?

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The poor. Oh, it was more than that.

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It was more than that. And we learn this when you read the Gospels in their entirety. And you can see this in elements of the writings of the church fathers.

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What we know from this text and from others is that not only did Jesus heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, give sight to the blind, cast out the demons, but that he had a money bag.

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And that the other thing that Jesus actively did was seek out those in most need of money, and he gave it to them.

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He met their monetary needs. And over and again, we

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Christians are instructed explicitly to work with our hands so that we can take care of our needs as well as the needs of others.

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That's exactly what Jesus did. So, you know, Jesus, king of kings, lord of lords who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and his earthly ministry was supported by some very wealthy women, scripture tells us, and that he used a portion of the monies that were used to support his ministry and his itinerant preaching in order to meet the financial needs of the poorest of the people that he would meet.

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Is there a first thing? The one we just read. Which?

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Judas had the money bag. Yeah. John 12, verse six.

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That was the money bag for the group. Yeah. He's the treasurer.

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Yeah. He's the treasurer of the disciples church council. Yeah, that's what he was.

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Right. Correct. Yeah. Yeah.

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But then it goes church fraud going on. And how many stories have we heard in our lifetime of such and such a pastor or such and such a secretary skimming off money for themselves from the church?

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All kinds of scandals along those lines. I want to give you another text along these lines and it's

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Ephesians chapter four and you'll note that in Ephesians, I always have to remind people of this.

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I understand we are talking about the commandments and what we're saying is law, law, law, law.

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But the reason why we obey is not in order to be saved. The reason why we are obeying these things and we're paying heed to them is because we are already saved.

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That's the reason. So don't think for a second that you have to do this in order to be saved.

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You do this because you is saved. That's the idea. So Ephesians chapter four, we're going to look towards the end of this part of the epistle.

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And specifically, I want to look at verse 28, but I want you to see the context. Here's what it says.

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Therefore, verse 25, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.

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Be angry and do not sin. Now, notice it doesn't say that anger is a sin. This is an important thing.

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It is very easy to sin in your anger, but anger in and of itself is not a sin. Christ himself got a little hot under the collars a few times, you know, as as the son of God.

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And yet he did not sin. So in your anger, do not sin and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

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So were you a bank robber, an identity thief before you became a Christian? All of that goes away and you were to get an honest job, put in an honest day's work for an honest wage so that you can meet your needs and give to those who financially are in need.

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Pretty clear, straight up the case. Now, a little bit of a note here. Theft doesn't always involve breaking and entering.

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Theft sometimes happens, you kind of think of the, they call it white collar crimes, but there's also blue collar crimes along these lines.

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I want you to think of it this way. You get to work, you're an hourly employee, you punch in and then you pull out your smartphone and you spend the next hour and a half liking things on Facebook, checking

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Twitter, respond. What are you going to use it with?

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Oh, we got stuff going on at work. Okay. We need a sergeant at arms.

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Yeah. Wow. Wow. Janet, I can honestly say I'm frightened by your exuberance.

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All right. So here's the idea. When you were employed, you have an agreement that you entered into a contract.

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Sometimes it's written, sometimes it's verbal. I will work this many hours for this much an hour and you in exchange will pay me this wage.

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So when you show up to work and you're not doing what you agreed to do, but you're doing the thing you want to do and you're getting paid by your employer to do it, you are stealing.

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The light has gone on, Janet has seen. She's ready to dance a jig. What is going on?

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Actually, you do. You don't have a stand to leg on. Wow. All right.

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I've never legged before, but okay. That's a new verb for us all. Yes, we're gonna be doing some legging next week here at Kongsvinger.

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Yeah. Well, the rest of you are trying to get the other person to understand that this is not right to do your job.

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You have to do your job. You can't do what you want to do. Oh my gosh.

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Yeah, that's stealing. Listen, Hoffa.

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This should not be happening. You are stealing. And as we made that statement, we got whacked at because she didn't take anything.

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Yeah, I would just take it as a chain of command because I'll be blunt, even the pagans know that's stealing.

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Taking your money. Yeah, exactly. So actually, yeah, this is this is theft.

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This is theft. And then when you go into your employer's office supply room and you decide that, you know,

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I'm running out of pens at home. So I'm going to fill up on my favorite rollerball pens and the blue ink, you know, with the two point.

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Oh, they just just the fluid gel thing. Oh, it's so smooth and wonderful. And you don't pay for it.

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That's stealing. That's. Yeah. But you get the idea.

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The idea, then, as Christians, we note what that our job is to protect and help our neighbors keep and grow what belongs to them, understanding that it is

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God who has given that given it to them. And if you need such things, God has give you given you a job and a means to get these things.

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And if it's beyond your reach, well, then you pray and ask God to help you meet those needs. But the idea here is, is that we keep an eye out for these things, but always with an eye out for a neighbor.

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Notice the recurring theme that we're always keeping an eye out for those who are financially in need.

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Another important thing. And let me see if I can find this really quick. I think it's in Proverbs 19.

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Very interesting promises regarding the poor. Yeah, there's a do a

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Bible word search for the word poor. And all of a sudden you'll see quite a few.

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Listen to this. Proverbs 19, 17. Listen to this. Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the

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Lord. The Lord will repay him for his deed. Oftentimes you sit there and you go, okay, this fellow has told me he needs to borrow such and such an amount of money.

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And he said he'll pay you back. And in your mind, you sit there and you go, there's no way there's it's just not going to happen.

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So you sit there and go, yeah, I know I'll never see my money again. Wrong. The fellow who comes to you and says,

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I'll pay you back. And you know, he can't. Don't worry about it.

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Right now. Good news. Good news. The prince that has been emailing everybody from Nairobi, they found the fellow and he's now in jail.

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Just want to say, okay, so you don't need to help those people who've been deposed as royalty from Africa.

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Okay. Yeah. Wasn't poor. And he was a white fellow anyway.

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But, but the idea then is this, is that when you meet the needs of somebody who cannot pay you back,

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God's got it. He's got it. You don't have to worry about it. The Lord will pay you back.

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And it may not be in this lifetime. Don't worry about it. So we can give without even the expectation of return from the person whom we are lending to.

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Don't worry in that case. God himself has given you a promise. You're not lending to that fellow.

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You're lending to me and I'll pay you back. This gives us freedom to be generous.

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It gives us freedom to even to give in a way that it is a true gift with no expectation of return.

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We can be generous and know that God's going to meet our needs. And then the idea is the reason why, part of the reason why we are working ourselves to the bone week after week under the curse and languishing is not merely to meet our own needs.

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It's not just to put food on your table. Part of what you are earning is to help somebody else put that food on their table.

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And this is what scripture tells us and teaches us. Now, one of the ways in which people break this commandment, we'll take a look at another text before we wrap up for the day.

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In Leviticus chapter 19, it discusses another thing and I'll be making another plug for the government here.

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I know the government has not paid me to say these things, but in Leviticus chapter 19, there is a common way, especially in the ancient world and until very recently, hasn't been solved for the most part in most countries, is that those people who set up shops in markets and places like this oftentimes will set up unjust weights.

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So that you think you're paying so much per pound, but in reality, they've rigged the scales in their favor.

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And Leviticus forbids this and it's a breaking of this commandment. You shall do no wrong in judgment, in measures of length or weight or quantity.

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You shall have just balances, just weights, a just ephah and a just hin.

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I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. So the idea then here is that this rules out as Christians, any scheming to get from people something by making them feel that they're buying something at a particular price, when in reality, they're paying a different price for it.

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Big plug for the government here. Every time I go to the gas pump and I get out of the car and put the gas pump into, you know, put the thing into my truck,

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I look and right there, there's a sticker on the gas pump that says that that pump was checked by somebody in the weights and measurements department for the state of North Dakota.

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When you go to the grocery store, when you're being in the checkout line, that little scale that they weigh your fruits and vegetables and other things that you pay by the pound on, that's also checked by the government.

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And so the idea here is that by us paying our taxes, we are helping again to keep this commandment by, through a distribution of work, making sure that somebody is tasked with the job to make sure there are not those out there who are taking advantage of consumers by rigging scales and pumps and things like that in their favor and siphoning off funds when somebody thinks they're getting one thing rather than another.

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So this speaks well, again, of one of the ways in which we keep this commandment is by pitching in part of our money to the government for the purpose of protecting each other and our neighbors.

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Didn't realize you're going to get a big pep talk about how great the government is, right? But we as Christians, we must see that the government is instituted by God and that it serves a legitimate function.

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And so when we pay our taxes and we see that the pumps are checked to make sure that no one's being stolen from, these are ways in which we are participating and ensuring the right things are happening and keeping these commandments.

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You didn't even realize that when you were paying your taxes that you were keeping the seventh commandment that you are. It's important.